


glory at the seams

by TheResurrectionist



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jewish, Character Study, Family Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Holidays, Jewish Character, Jewish Holidays, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, not as wonky as the tags make it seem, so fucking many - Freeform, so many references to candles, the author is a reform Jew and tried her best, עברית | Hebrew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 21:19:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18558073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheResurrectionist/pseuds/TheResurrectionist
Summary: A glimpse into the tradition, loss, and meaning of the Wayne name.





	glory at the seams

**Author's Note:**

> I have seen a lot of references to Martha being canonically Jewish (and therefore Bruce as well) on tumblr, but haven't seen a lot of works addressing it. I hope that changes someday.

A gentle hand cups his face, quieting him.

“Hush, Bruce,” Mother says.

He watches as she strikes a match, sulfur burning in his nose. The sparks are pulled from the air, transformed into light and heat with a flick of fingers. She draws the flame toward the two candles, touching them to each wick.

“Your turn.”

Bruce puffs his cheeks obediently, blowing out the match. Mother smiles, setting the blackened wood on the edge of the candlestick. She covers his hands with hers, framing the two candles between them.

" _One_.” Mother says, moving their hands. “ _Two_.” His fingers slide between hers, threatening to slip back. Together, they pull and bend the smoke, until Bruce can feel its heat on his cheeks, inhaling the sulfur like he can hold it in his lungs, deep down inside him.

Her hands slip over his eyes.

“ _Three_.”

* * *

They sing a different melody this time. There are more candles as well. Bruce lets Father hold him up to the table in the window, taking the lit candle from Mother.

“Start from the left,” she says, guiding his hand so the candle tilts away from them. Together, they brush the flame against the unlit wicks, tiny drops of fire blooming into existence as the candles catch, one by one.  

Wax falls on the aluminum foil lining the table. Mother takes their candle, carefully slipping it in between the two rows of light, fastening it to the menorah.

“Excellent job,” Father says from behind, as Mother watches the flames. He’d been quiet until now, cheeks rosy with unspoken excitement. “So, is this the part where we drink?”

Under the table, Mother stomps her heel. _Hard._ Father chokes on his laugh, hopping back on one foot with an indignant squawk.

“Can I play with my firetruck now?” Bruce asks, wiggling in Father’s hands when he doesn’t answer. “Please?”

After a second, he’s set down on the hardwood. Bruce makes a beeline for the Christmas tree, grabbing his firetruck and digging the shiny chrome wheels into the carpet as Father says something to Mother.

When he looks back, firetruck momentarily forgotten, they’re arm in arm, frozen in front of the candles. Mother’s face is a flicker of yellow and orange, eyes pressed shut as her lips move, soundless.

* * *

There’s an endless stream of people at the door, filing in and out of the parlor in a steady, haunting march that seems familiar to everyone but him. Alfred sits him in front of the sofa closest to the door, half-hidden by Mother’s favorite rose bush, but they still find him--unerringly, like their only mission is to lay eyes on him and purse their lips.

It’s strange to see adults crouch, settling onto the floor so slowly, heavily, like the world is weighing them down. The closest one--an older man Bruce recognizes, vaguely--grasps his hand, pressing a kiss to either cheek.

There’s a torn ribbon at his lapel. Bruce fixates on the rent in the silk, dazed as he’s gently released from the man’s grasp.

"המקום ינחם אתכם בתוך שאר אבלי ציון וירושלי."

the man says, patting his hand. A woman next to him--his wife--grasps his shoulder. Behind them, something is burning; he sees nothing but smoke, tastes it and breathes in the acrid staleness.

“May their memory be a blessing.” she says, with a finality that makes it all, suddenly, real.

* * *

He misses them. The first four days, he sees them in every half-familiar skirt, collared shirt, or shoes. He reaches out, desperate to touch something familiar, only to find something utterly not staring down at him.  

By the fifth day, he barely notices the mourners. They come and go, leaving foil-wrapped platters in the kitchen, the dining room, the pantry. There are fruit bowls and cold meat dishes and pasta, a half dozen kinds of casseroles stacked neatly against each other, their ingredients written in permanent marker on the side.

Alfred eats his meals with him, cross-legged and silent on the parlor carpet. The scrape of silverware against the simple bowls scratches him into a blank presentness. Thursday’s _tuna casserole, dairy,_ congeals at the bottom of the dish.

He doesn’t ask why Alfred won’t heat it up.

When they’ve finished, the butler grabs their bowls, pushing up from the carpet.

“Not bad for _מילכיק_ ,” he says, heading for the kitchen.

It’s the first words he’s uttered in days, beyond simple greetings. Those had been sickly sweet nothings; these were sharp words, overlaid by bitterness. As if Alfred could be bitter.

By the time Bruce remembers to nod, the room is empty again.

* * *

Mother’s possessions go into the last box, almost as if Alfred can’t bear to let them go. Father’s stethoscope, bag, and tools are long gone, packed away into cardboard with trembling hands. But Mother’s--

“Your grandfather,” Alfred murmurs over a dust-streaked photo frame. He sets it in Bruce’s hands, shaking his head. “When he was a boy.”

He squints at the yellowed photograph, wiping the dust from the glass. A young boy stands at the center, smiling. On either side, a man and woman hold up his hands, grinning at the camera.

“Who are they?” he asks, pointing. Alfred glances away, busying himself with Mother’s makeup set.

“Gone,” he says.

* * *

 He’s eighteen, and there are a million paths in front of him. A thousand journeys behind him. Father’s watch is a warm circle around his wrist, tethering him to something long-gone. Tucked in the battery compartment is Mother’s wedding band, simple in silver, and so tiny in his hands now.

He stands on the farthest dock, waiting for a sign. The morning fog rolls in, slowly, around him, boat horns echoing in the distance.

With a short exhale, he steps forward, too impatient to wait.

* * *

There’s a certain kind of familiarity in the feeling of knuckles on bone, a biblical righteousness that digs down deep inside of him. He tastes bloodlust and pushes it down, calling it by any other name as trial after trial is placed before him.

He twists an arm, slams a knee to the ground and brings the man’s neck up, bared, ready to face justice. The League chamber goes quiet.

Ra’s watches from above, a slim sword in one hand. He steps down from the dais, humming approval that sings through his blood.

“Are you a man of God, Bruce?”

Ra’s pauses in front of him, and drags the sword against the man’s neck. The blade glances across the jugular, drawing the faintest of lines against the thudding vein.

Bruce watches it shift against the razor-sharp edge, millimeters away from being severed. He thinks of floods, of blood-soaked earth, of silent first-borns and the stale scent of ash, lingering in fields and forests, scratched into walls, pressed into the dirt. Of fairness and cruelty, of bullet casings across cobblestones.

“Does it matter?” he asks.

Blood slips down the steel, severing the thudding jugular. In a handful of seconds, the man’s heart stops entirely. He slumps forward.

Ra’s smiles, sharper than his sword-edge.

* * *

 A chest of photographs and memories greets him at the Manor, conspicuously placed next to his morning tray. There are a thousand tasks to complete, in order to even begin implementing tasks, but the world seems to slow as he smells the aged wood. He traces a hand along its edge, transported somewhere else.

 _Mother,_ he thinks, catching the brief memory before it can spiral away. Soft hands thumbing gently through paper. Curled letters and dates. Something important, slipping from a five year-old’s understanding.

Sipping on coffee, he digs through marriage certificates and wills, skipping the photographs that are still too painful. His fingers come to rest upon a certificate he’s never seen before, pausing.

_This is to record that Bruce Thomas Wayne,_

_  
_ _Son of Thomas Wayne (_ _תאומא_ )

 

and

 

 _Son of Martha Wayne (_ _מרים_ _)_

 

 _was given the name_ _גבריאל_ _on May 2nd, 1978, in accordance with Jewish tradition._

 

He hovers over the name, mouthing it silently, until the consonants and vowels twist just right, familiar on his lips.

 

 _Gabriel, bin Touma et Miriam._  

 

_Gabriel, bin Touma et Miriam._

 

_Gabriel, bin Touma et Miriam._

* * *

It’s impossible to ignore the irony, kneeling above Gotham, watching over his city. There’s a half-dozen cliches hidden in the persona of the Bat. He is a guardian, a protector, a hand of vengeance. He is silent until bidden. More than a man; less than others.

Gotham is a different city, emboldened by its ills, branded by a different name. But not so far removed from Jerusalem, its ideas of a city and its people, a concept of justice from above that persisted into the modern era, somehow.  

 _Man’s search for meaning,_ he thinks, adjusting his gloves. The kevlar tightens around his fists, a reassuring weight on a windy roof.

A block over, a woman stumbles then falls, restrained at the wrist by a man with possession and anger in every line of his body.

He smiles, a slight quirk of his lips in the darkness, and leaves kabbalah and rabbinical reasoning behind.

* * *

Clark understands what it means to leave. What it means to sever ties and never return, to lose a connection that can never be re-woven. For all his jovial talk of family and warm Kansas nights, there is a sadness in his eyes. One Bruce knows from the mirror--from Alfred, reflected back at him from anyone who pities the name _Wayne._

Clark doesn’t pity him. He sits with him, silently, as Bruce stares and stares and stares at yahrzeit candles in the dying fall, struggling to find any thread of connection, of familiarity in their smoke.

_Mother cups her hands gently, drawing the flames towards her face. They drift to cover his own, guiding him through the motions. Soft, lilting Hebrew is whispered into his ear--_

He blinks, losing the memory. Next to him, Clark’s face is twisted in an expression of concern, lips curved, like he’s about to say something.

Bruce looks away, ashamed. His jaw clenches against the onslaught of emotion, pushing it away through sheer force of will.

A hand reaches out, covering his own. Clark squeezes gently, saying nothing. Understanding flows between them, unspoken, framed by the flickering candles.

 _Do you look up at the stars and think of them,_ he wants to ask, _do you look at the galaxies and beg them for memories?_

Clark’s gaze is distant. Bruce’s fingers graze his jaw, drawing him back with a drag of his thumb across stubble, gentle like he never is. Clark’s eyes sharpen, dilating in the flickering light.

He presses their lips together and thinks of dust.

* * *

 A lighter sparks, blue flame flickering in the darkness. Bruce holds the shamash to it, the wick catching. With a smile, he passes it to Damian, ignoring Jason and Tim’s squabbling over the last blue candle.

Dick laughs quietly next to him, already four candles into his menorah, fire blooming in the parlor window. The room begins to lighten.

 

_Ravid._

 

Clark’s hand is at his waist, anchoring him. The candles are lit, the last stick wedged into its holder. The boys step back, watching him. Jason’s eyes find his, as if sensing his hesitation.

 

_Ya’akov._

 

Bruce takes Damian’s hands in his own, marveling silently at their smallness. He is their youngest in so many ways, endearing and lively, despite his size.

 

_Amichai._

 

 _Ready?_ he asks the other boys with a tilt of his head. Together, he moves their hands over Damian’s eyes, drawing familiar circles as they begin the bracha. Tim exhales one last time, leaning towards his candles.

 

_Ira._

 

“One,” he says. Clark’s hand squeezes his hip, a reassuring presence.

 

_Baruch._

 

“Two,” he takes one last glance at the older boys, a row of dark hair and bright smiles.

 

“Three.”

  
  
  
  
  


_The End._


End file.
